


A Heart By Any Name

by Toshi_Nama



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 06:57:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20756225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toshi_Nama/pseuds/Toshi_Nama
Summary: The world is not what it was when Abelas last stepped out of Mythal's Temple, but when his choice is to do so or die, he follows Hellenia Lavellan through the Eluvian along with the last of the Sentinels.What will he choose, when he is forced to recognize the world as it is - and a woman of this world who hears from Mythal?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gamerfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamerfic/gifts).

(Fall 9:41 Dragon. Skyhold)

The whispers were overwhelming. It wasn’t  _ whispers,  _ but the indistinct murmurs hovered just on the edge of comprehension - a cacophony of them. She shook her head and threw off the covers. Neither helped, but the cool stone against her feet anchored her, at least a little, to the  _ now.  _ The moon was still up. 

_ Moons rising and setting, the one pulled against the other, shadows dancing across them… _

She shook her head again. Nothing had prepared her for this. Though, what could have? She counted the stairs as she descended to Skyhold’s main hall, the numbers flowing from Trade to elvhen in a way that had become disturbingly familiar. Rather than pad through the enormous wooden doors that made the main entry, she slipped through to the side courtyard and the whispers of ‘forest’ it held.

A figure looked her way. “Atish’an, Inquisitor.”

“Abelas,” she sighed. ‘Sorrow.’ She wondered again why, but didn’t ask. There were too many answers in her mind to questions unasked to risk adding more. Added to the fact Abelas had only bitterly joined them through the mirror along with a bare handful of his fellow...priests, she knew enough to not salt a fresh wound. Instead, she moved along the faint path laid in closer-grown herbs, letting the scent of crushed leaves rise. He paced at her side.

“A restless night.”

He had the same way of speaking as Solas, but that was a wound  _ she _ didn’t care to re-open freshly back from Crestwood and the revelations he’d struck her with. It would ease with time, she was certain of it. At least he’d only taken her heart, and not her faith or her connection to the People. “Do you hear them?”

The ancient elf’s silence was a form of confirmation. “At times they are more insistent. It is so both in times of need and with new initiates.”

She rubbed briefly at the lines on her face. She’d felt called to June, to creation - and yet now… “Are they slave markings?”

The soft footfalls matching hers stopped, then started again. “Ah. There are some that said so, in the time of Arlathan. You know it.” She wasn’t sure - the whispers were hard to distinguish from her own desires and fears. “The truth is complex. What the shemlen - those who were born after - know them as, I cannot say.”

“Are they?”

Abelas sighed. “You have little elvhen, and I little ability to translate some things to Trade.”

She winced and turned away. “Then I will leave.”

“Wait!” She did, hearing real emotion in his voice even as the whispers kept fading and growing in her. “There is an answer. It is within you and I both. The knowledge of the Well. I cannot give it to you, but...I can help you find it yourself.” He watched her closely. “In either case, that is what they were. What they have become, only your people can decide.”

“Our.”

His eyes shifted away before they closed. “Perhaps.”

That was something she’d not heard often, and from one who knew so much more? He had called her  _ shemlen  _ when he had first met her. Those of Elvhenan were mysterious creatures of legend - they knew so much the People had lost to time and Tevinter’s cruelty. Then again, her point wasn’t one of knowledge, but of belonging. Community. Had he known so little of that over the years?

_ Power and its rise; the worship of knowledge, protection...vengeance. Arrogance. Certainty of what was done...certainty without understanding the cost. _

Perhaps he hadn’t seen it. She knew there were things  _ she  _ should have seen, but hadn’t because she’d chosen to be blind.  _ ‘Vhenan.’  _

This time, when the whispers rose, she welcomed them drowning out one particular voice, and a word she’d not hear from him again.

**

(Fall, 9:41 Dragon. Frostback Mountains)

He watched her as they meditated. This shemlen had been touched by Fen’harel, and had stood against his words. She was injured, yes, but had neither bent nor broken. Did she know? He did - any of those who served Mythal in her sanctum of course would recognize him - surely she did. This ‘Lavellan’ was too - impressive - not to.

How long since someone like that had walked?

“Don’t try to understand.”

She glared at him, her eyes pale against her rich skin and deep vallaslin. “How can you say that? I have to understand, Abelas. If this is what Corypheus sought, I need the knowledge to defeat him. The world depends on that, whether I like it or not.”

“I respect your burden.” How to explain? “Even for initiates who spent tens of years preparing, the Vir Abelas’an is a shock. The whispers demand to be heard.”

“Yes,” she murmured back to him, “they do.”

“The challenge is to know how to  _ not _ listen. If you listen to the multitude, it is nonsense. You must learn how to not listen — to hear what you need at this moment.”

Her pale eyes lit, then faded again. “But how?”

Abelas gestured around the small glade on a mountain that had called to them. “Listen to the now.” The ‘now’ she had found was more beautiful than he’d seen since taking his vallaslin and beginning his studies at the Shrine so many  _ erana  _ ago. The scents were different and layered, light and rich at once with the sharp coolness the air never truly lost so high. There were a few birds he couldn’t recognize, diving and singing among the thin aspens and pines. “Ground yourself into who you are and where you are. The Vir Abelas’an must learn you as much as you learn it.”

He’d had weeks to grow used to her and to the ways of talking before he was trusted enough for this private expedition; and even still it was a ‘this’ with troops sworn to the cause carefully patrolling outside their immediate perception. As she settled - this ‘Lavellan,’ though she looked nothing like the last _dirth’ena enasalin_ he’d known wearing that as part of his name, he studied not her but how she fit into this unfamiliar setting. 

If the Vir Abelas’an was to learn this time, so must he. If it was to learn what it was to live now as an  _ elf  _ rather than one of the elvhen, so must he. Otherwise, Fen’harel’s foolishness might doom everything.

The ripples of magic against the abomination of Fen’harel’s ‘Veil’ smoothed into the glade as she breathed. This session, he matched her rhythm. She had learned how to breathe with the pulse of the murmuring whispers inside their minds; now it must learn to do the same.

**

In dreams, Abelas walked the lost Temple. The mosaics, as pure as they had been, murmured against his mind with the chimes of devotion and cleverness. Birds sang in harmony, their bright colors highlighting the pure tones of gold and green Mythal had selected for this, her most sought after place of worship. It was hers, but through her, it was  _ his.  _ He stood before the Vir’abellasan; it was he who dispensed the answers the others sought - or did not. At times, it was because the knowledge did not lie within the temple. Others, it was because the question and its answer worked contrary to Mythal’s wishes.

Dirthamen had his secrets, but Mythal…

How can you protect without knowing the People? How can you take vengeance without knowing their hidden desires and weaknesses?

Abelas smiled slightly, keeping his thoughts within that deceptive simplicity of knots and shadows. Few could create such a memory, much less one that could respond to the dreamer’s wishes rather than just the Dreamer’s, even in the shattered past of empire and power. Only one of the Evanuris or those who dared to set themselves against them.

“All gone,” his voice murmured. Fen’harel knew the Vir Abelas’an was knowledge - did he also know that it was protection? Mythal told him much, but that was a secret kept within those who both wore her vallaslin and bound themselves and their magic to the Vir Abelas’an.

_ What if,  _ drifted from below his surface thoughts,  _ it didn’t have to stay gone? _

Forcing himself from the dream, Abelas didn’t move. Instead, he stared at the stones above his head, tracing patterns in their irregular fitting. Was that thought his, or the dream’s?

It had been too long since he’d had to match wits in the Fade. Mythal help him, he did not know.

**

It was a struggle, he realized. Not only was there the natural bond of the geas, but this Inquisitor, was something else. Ghilana - no, she claimed ‘Lavellan’ and ‘Hellenia,’ though the latter was nothing of the elvhen. 

She was nothing he recognized, no more than the world around him. The Well knew of the fall of Arlathan and the Imperium that scavenged its corpse. Knowledge helped little to adapt, and less to participate. There was little he could provide to the bustling community of different shemlen races other than to watch the one who was no shemlen, and help...Lavellan...adapt to the Well.

When had the elvhen begun shading to match the world around them? He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised so much happened while he slumbered. It made those like Lavellan exotic, unreadable to him beneath her rich honey skin. Even seeing June’s claim across her face was startling to one who had been a devotee of Mythal’s sanctuary since he left youth behind.

Abelas pretended ease, but studied her to understand what he slept through. How did her exotically angled green eyes see the world? Was it the same as his own?

“You’re watching me again.” 

He could recognize the shadows pooled in her eyes; how could he not, since he had claimed Abelas? “Forgive me. This world is strange.”

“Is it because I lack magic?”

He shook his head. “Though I am surprised you had no gift and the Well still spoke. We who drink give our magic to the Well and its maintenance. I don’t know yet if it will return now that the Vir Abelas’an is destroyed.” The rest of the sentence played out privately.  _ Now that everything I knew is gone.  _ Still. He recognized Fen’harel’s work; surely she had as well. He had been with the magic he’d lost to her since then, from what he’d heard. It was Fen’harel. Mythal’s friend, but still a trickster, still determined on whatever course he selected.

Her shoulders relaxed. “I’m sure what we lost is so much more than we have now.”

Abelas shook his head before he thought. Then he let thought catch up. “You have the same knowledge as I, now, or will. What was lost of value?”

He watched the woman he considered Ghilana as her eyes went distant. “Knowledge,” she said softly.

“What else?” 

She took a sharp breath and turned away. “Power. Territory. Control. We were no better than the humans that we blame for our loss.”

Her pain cut him, but not enough that he could not hear the same murmurs from the Well. Mythal had been killed, but had not been lost. He knew that now. How many  _ erana  _ had he and his fellows listened? Not until  _ she  _ came had he felt Mythal’s power again. _ _

The next day, tiny snowdrops that he’d nurtured from the mountain clearing bloomed in his carefully tended pots. Lavellan had become something more than the others who heard the whispers. She was different. She listened, but she  _ acted.  _ She changed, as they had not. More, he realized, she was beautiful. 

The day after, Abelas ignored the sharp look Solas gave Ghilana as she smiled through the stream of noble shemlen that pledged their support or wheedled for it in return, a tiny white bloom tucked against the honey-and-shadow of her complexion.


	2. Chapter 2

(Winter, 9:41: Skyhold)

“I need to go.” She shifted, looking at Morrigan. The closeness they’d begun developing had been strained by her decision to drink from the Vir Abelas’an. It had been more difficult than she’d expected to invite the human mage to join she and Abelas, but Morrigan had context to add to some of the shifts in language and story.

The women shared a glance. “You wish to go alone, Inquisitor?”

She could argue she wouldn’t be alone - she hadn’t been alone since that mark on her hand, and the very concept was laughable with the murmurs in her mind, but that wasn’t what Morrigan was asking. 

No, the question was only about the three of them.

“Yes,” she finally sighed. “It is best and feels...right.”

“And your companion?”

Hellenia bit her lip as she fought down a blush. Even if Morrigan was implying something more than they both had drunk from the well, she shouldn’t react. A reaction would only prove that there was more closeness than...no, she had been there before. But it was different. Abelas struggled to learn as she did - they reached across a divide of millennium of history with only the murmuring whispers to tie them together. 

“He didn’t disagree.”

_ ‘Would that I could...the murmurs say it could be either of us. But you know the present need in a way I cannot. The Guardian will be more capable under your hand than mine.’ _

_ It was one of the few times they’d touched, fingers entwined for that moment. Then they’d realized - though she’d tightened hers before she’d let him withdraw. ‘You can learn.’ _

_ That serious tease had startled a smile from the somber man - a smile she preferred not to think about. ‘Perhaps I can, but I am not willing to assume I can learn quickly enough.’ _

“I see.”

Now she did blush, praying it wouldn’t show against her darker skin. “Please, I don’t know if the two of you can continue piecing together what happened at the Conclave - I worry.”

Morrigan smiled, her eyes enigmatic but oddly soft. “We shall. Do not fear on that account.”

It would have to do. She nodded and hurried out of Skyhold’s wild upper courtyard to find the others. There would be time to deal with her feelings, but  _ now  _ held more important matters.

**

“Aneth ara, Abelas.”

The inflection identified the speaker without his having to turn around, if the haze of the Fade around them had not. “Atish’an, Solas. That is the name you prefer now, is it not? Why have you come?”

Even though he was no Dreamer, drinking from the Vir Abelas’an ensured none could shape his dreams without the murmurs warning him. It was something he’d not used since Arlathan’s fall.

“To speak, only. You are new to this world. Now that you have seen what my mistake has cost it, I wanted to ask for your aid in correcting that error and restoring our people.”

Whether it was his memory or that of Solas, the haze around them shaped into the Shrine as it had once been. Tall spires reached, fountains of water and sparkling magic bringing relaxation to the pilgrims who prayed or waited for their masters to walk the patterns and gain admittance to the sanctum. Birds flit around in improbable colors, harmonizing with the mosaics as they shifted from turquoise to gold when they flew over the meditation rooms.

Abelas refused to walk, though he acknowledged the heady memory. This, he realized, was one of Solas’ and not his. He rarely moved from the inner sanctum once he’d found his place. 

“Then speak. I could see your weaving in her hand. This is the mistake you want corrected?”

Solas hummed. “Yes, but more than that. It is the  _ Veil  _ I must correct. I destroyed our people, Abelas.” His voice throbbed with passion underneath the veil of calm that anyone of power had in the days of empire. “Both sets of our people. I must correct it.”

“What would that correction entail? How  _ did  _ your power become a part of the Inquisitor?”

“Another mistake, and one I am already rectifying.” Solas trailed his fingers into a fountain to watch magenta ripple across it. “When I woke, I had no power and no means to regain it. Too much of my gift had been given to my orb, and the rest trapped beyond the Veil. To wake in a world so colorless with no ability to change that fact was terrible. It wasn’t long before I encountered Felassan and he began to explain what had happened. The Fade’s reflections were confused by terror.”

Abelas ignored the dream with practice. It was neither what those who remained in the Fade had created nor was it a reflection of the physical; the only knowledge to be gained was of the Dreamer, and Dreamers rarely let much of themselves show. It was safer to create something that could be a memory of the one they encountered - or hunted.

Instead, he kept his emotions tranquil. “It is a different world.”  _ It didn’t have to be.  _ The seed from earlier had grown, but it was still a tender shoot.

“Then you see it, too! Magic was never meant to be sundered from our kind. Look what pale shadows they have become, even before considering the others that now populate the land that once belonged to us.” Solas scoffed. “Populate is too kind a word. You have seen what they have done, surely?”

Ah, the danger of their people and endless years. ‘Different’ was a word fraught with meaning. It was an insult to someone’s creation that had failed to achieve beauty or a pinnacle of craft; it was a word of otherness.

The whispers and knowledge from other perspectives changed those who drank far more than the geas they accepted or the vallaslin they wore proudly.  _ Everyone  _ who drank was part of the Vir Abelas’an, and even though there were similarities, each person and perspective was unique. Then there were the memories the Well collected from Mythal’s petitioners; the challenges that they could not surmount on their own, enemies they could not defeat without a greater ally than they had made.

To those who drank, ‘different’ was an acknowledgement, not something to be feared.

“What is it you wish?”

“Only what I have already asked! Your help. I must regain my orb, make it whole, and then I will have the ability to return properly to the Fade and undo the Veil.”

Nothing was without cost. “The result?”

“Our world will be restored. Those of us who remain; this will all be as a nightmare, no more.”

Even the long history of practice could not prevent the tiny leap of flame within his heart. The past - the time he remembered, when Mythal walked her temple freely. When others came to learn. Another face, one honey-dark, interposed itself. Now he turned to look at Solas. “And those who have risen since? The Inquisitor?”

It was Fen’harel’s turn to look away. “Do not be seduced as I almost was. Perhaps...she has breathed true magic. Some will manage. Those who can’t - if they can’t live in the world as it was meant to be, should they have come to being at all?”

“You have given me much to consider.” The murmurs in his mind had become a cacophony; wantings and warnings equally mixed. He let them rise, knowing they would mask the ripples of his own reactions against Solas’ Dream.

The past couldn’t be restored. It could only be remembered.

Couldn’t it?

**

Hellenia returned, a glow of certainty surrounding her that had been a mere shadow before.

“Your journey was successful, then?”

Of course. She could feel her smile grow, though only a little. Rather than answer immediately, she gave her pack and bow to one of the teeming populace in Inquisition garb, then let her feet carry her to the wilder garden. Abelas followed; she knew he would. Though this place was easier than many, it was still not made by or for Mythal.  _ Who  _ mattered only to the Keepers and the past. Deshanna would eat green berries to have access to what now lived in her mind.

“It answered me.”

Abelas nodded, inspecting the lattice of arbor blessing newly-flourishing. “It would. You have learned to listen.”

She turned and studied him. The undercurrent in his voice was unexpected. Murmurs ebbed and flowed, but they didn’t demand attention as they had at the shrine. 

“What is wrong?”

He turned to face not her, but the tree behind her. “It is nothing.” When she did nothing but wait for the truth, he relented. “I have served Mythal for nine and a half  _ erana.  _ To have the Vir Abelas’an call to you and not I is unexpected. If she had a high priest, it was I.”

“It was a dragon. A high dragon - or something more.” Hellenia reached out to touch his chest, feeling his heartbeat just that much slower than her own. “She is of the world today. Perhaps that is why.”

He sighed. “And I am not.”

Snowdrops in Skyhold; tunes sung among the whispering trees of the full moon. Murmurs from within could be ignored as she considered what she knew of Abelas. “You could be.”

Finally, he responded. His left hand traced the lines of vallaslin that flowed across her temple, and it was all she could do to not close her eyes and purr. Simple tenderness was a rarity. “Perhaps.”

She watched him leave, her joy dampened by frustration. How could he not realize that he could join in and among those here? Even if he was uncomfortable with the Dalish, there were so many peoples - he hadn’t expressed unease, and there was nothing in the whispers she had grown used to that spoke a warning.

Hellenia shook her head and went to find Morrigan. He was an ally and a mystery. Why should she care?

_ Because,  _ she confessed,  _ he could be more than that.  _

**

Mythal.  _ Mythal.  _ Ghilana couldn’t contain herself - but he had already known. The whispers and memories had leapt, as had the geas in both of them as it reached out to hold her in the Fade. Even on the other side of Fen’harel’s Veil, he could recognize her touch of power, sure and amused.

_ Mythal had not died. _

But she had. She  _ had.  _ He forced himself to remember the form Mythal had claimed in the Fade; that of a  _ human  _ woman. A woman who called Morrigan, ‘daughter.’

The information tumbled against his bitterness. The empire was gone. Elvenhan was gone. Mythal had…

His heart stuttered. Mythal  _ had chosen to lie in this world, and had chosen to become closer to the shemlen.  _

Doing so was not a betrayal of her memory.

The buried thoughts rose, having rooted in every smile of Ghilana’s as she moved from ‘Inquisitor’ to ‘Lavellan,’ as the shadows faded from her eyes.  _ Love was not a betrayal of the past.  _

It was a choice to  _ live  _ in the present.

The Veil screamed a protest, and he turned to look. All those who were mages turned to look with him, as did the strange ones named ‘Templars.’ He could taste the change in the air, rich and full. Only one who knew how it had once tasted would also catch the hint of uneasy rot.

The one who Fen’harel gave his orb to.

No. No, Fen’harel had faded. The one who walked now was  _ solas _ in truth. Mythal had always preferred those who allied or served her to have pride.

She rushed out from Skyhold’s hall, spotting him. “I must go.” She bit her lip. “It is the only way.”

It was. “You have Mythal’s blessing, Inquisitor.” In view of the others, he remembered her title.

The gardens were still, the two of them nearly ignored as orders were shouted from the tall shemlen. The bustle rapidly moved past them as people found arms, mounts, or chose to get in the way. 

“Abelas, I…”

He hushed her with a finger on her lips, though it would not last for long. In rare intimacy, he bent just enough for their foreheads to touch. June’s child, bound to these people and Mythal both, but for the moment they breathed together, none of it mattered. 

“Trust yourself,” he murmured, a word catching in his throat. “This world has too much beauty in it to risk its loss.”

Abelas heard her pulse speed, then return if to a quicker pace. “I will,” she murmured, her lips brushing his finger.

When she turned to leave, he watched the tree as it sang to itself. Then he turned and entered the Herald’s Rest. Those who remained would be there or in the Great Hall. The smaller building had been repurposed; it was fresher than the rest of this half-remembered relic of Elvenhan. Those who lived  _ now  _ had claimed it for their own.

If he were to better understand the others who lived now, here was a place to begin.

**

(Spring, 9:42 Dragon: Skyhold)

She hummed a tune from seven  _ erana _ ago as she oiled her bow and checked her string. The strange looks hadn’t grown much stranger, and now that most of the army, nobles, and pilgrims had gone, Skyhold was restful, if not peaceful. Her hand ached, but less since the meditation exercises had surfaced. 

If she were honest with herself, Solas’ departure had also helped. The ache hadn’t gone but faded as she no longer worried about seeing his face in the corner of her vision or hearing his poetic lectures to the mages who had pledged their aid. The whispers strengthened as another of those pledged to Mythal approached. “Abelas.”

“Ghilana.”

She shook her head. “That is not my name.”

Surely he had - no, his name for her nature had lurked in his mind rather than said aloud. “You have guided us - it’s a mark of respect.”

She focused on stringing her bow. “Is it respect if it goes against my preference? My name is Hellenia.”

“Ir abelas.”

The whispers chuckled along with her, though she did him the courtesy of not doing so aloud. Then she drew, and sent her quiver into the targets, one by one.

He was still there when she finished and turned.

“Why are you still here?”

**

Abelas should have expected that question. He’d asked it often enough over the past weeks. With the threat of Corypheus gone, it might be possible to rebuild Mythal’s sanctuary and re-establish the Well. The whispers of those who had drunk might only exist in their minds, but there was always new knowledge for Mythal to collect.

Why hadn’t he left? “I have nowhere to go.”

Her eyes softened. “Nor do I. You have no People, and mine are not ready for the knowledge I have.” 

He knew that whatever was between the woman in front of him - the one he had apparently insulted for months - and Fen’harel was more than it seemed. Abelas swallowed around the knives he felt as he realized he had done exactly the same as  _ he  _ had; treated her with discourtesy, insulted her and her clan, and chosen to not listen. “Would you like me to go, Hellenia?”

Her eyes closed, then opened again. “Yes.”

The word shouldn’t hurt, but she was of the same geas, and relaxed enough to let the experience of the Well rest as almost-forgotten memories rather than force it to speak words. His insult...of course she would not wish anything with someone who treated her as Solas had. Knowledge made him no less a fool. “I will pack my things.”

She smiled. “Abelas, I am not exiling you. The Arlathvhen is in a month. Come with. Meet the People of today.”

**

(Epilogue - the Arlathven)

Knowledge was a strange thing, Hellenia decided as she watched Abelas listen to the stories she’d grown up hearing. She knew where they were wrong, but knew that in some ways, that made them more right.

He stood and joined her in the shadows of an aravel.

“You didn’t try to correct the hahren.”

Abelas shook his head, his hair now brushing his ears. “No.” Between the Well and the past months, she didn’t need to insult him with the rest of the question. He did lower his voice to keep the conversation even more private. “History is fact, but these are more than history if I understand the hahren aright. These stories have grown with the clans and changed to keep the truth fresh. It doesn’t matter that the war they speak of was between Evanuris rather than against the Imperium; what matters is the choice to remain a People and become the clans.”

She smiled, her own aching heart knowing that Solas would never have understood. He had been mysterious, powerful, exotic...and older. Abelas, though she’d not asked his years, had stripped off his coat and helped pull a halla from the sticky mud she’d slipped into, and drank with the others after. He listened.

Solas would return to her, but she no longer looked forward to that. The journeys and wonders he’d built in the Fade held no appeal as she felt his eyes in her dreams. It wasn’t her that mattered. “He’ll come for it,” she whispered, rubbing her gloved palm.

“He will, but not tonight.”

“Oh?” Hellenia threw him a teasing smile. “Will you protect me from him?”

**

It wasn’t the whispers or uncounted years of watching the same sanctuary that guided him now, but the vibrant celebration she’d immersed him in the past week. He returned her smile, brushing his fingers along markings that showed devotion to a cause and the People that surrounded him.

Whether she kissed him, or he her, didn’t matter. “No, Hellenia,” he murmured. “I will not stand before you, but beside you.”

**

“Abelas!” Lavellan’s hahren clasped his forearm. “Dareth shiral. Thank you for joining us - the Keeper has a few final matters, but wanted me to tell you that you’re welcome with Clan Lavellan, if you decide to make the Clans your home.”

The man shook his head, amused that Fen’harel’s backhanded slice in the Sanctuary had come true in a way the Trickster could not have predicted. Solas had meant  _ his  _ people, not the People he’d chosen to know. “Please. Call me Enanas.” Hellenia had come up in time to hear - and smile.

_ Call me ‘blessed.’  _ He hadn’t recognized the truth of it until now, but he was; blessed with  _ life _ rather than the unchanging guardianship of their goddess, blessed with her presence in it. The past was still a memory, but he no longer sorrowed at its passing.


End file.
